REVISITING THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE CATEGORY OF LIFE (ON THE BASIS OF THE ENGLISH, GERMAN AND RUSSIAN LANGUAGES)

Abstract

The modern process of globalization has affected various spheres of social life and causes interest to the search and study of universal categories on the basis of different languages. Such categories are intended to ensure communication between people of different cultures. The category of life is one of the basic, universal conceptual categories. This article deals with one of the ways to solve the problem – the search for common semantic components of the lexemes that nominate the category of life in different languages. The article also provides justification for the analysis in the diachronic aspect. The etymology of the English lexeme “life”, the German lexeme “Leben” and the Russian lexeme “Жизнь” is analyzed, common and distinctive features in their development are identified. The revealed common semantic components prove the universality of the category of life. The original features show its national specificity.